In various surgical procedures involving closing wounds of living tissue, it is known that a pledget or cushioning pad may be used with a suture in order to buttress the suture and inhibit the suture from cutting into the tissue. Suture pledget devices find particular application in cardio-vascular surgery, where a suture cutting through delicate vascular or arterial tissue can have serious adverse consequences to the health and welfare of the patient. Surgeons often encounter difficulty, however, when placing sutures having pledgets attached to them. Sutures generally have an inherent degree of twist or memory, so sutures often tend to become tangled or twisted adjacent to the pledget prior to and during use.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a suture-pledget surgical device which has little or no tendency to become tangled or twisted adjacent to the pledget prior to or during use.